Dawn Apart News

Welcome Prospectors, to a brand new edition of our dev blog newsletter in which we’ll take you on a journey to the massively overhauled surface of the planet Aurora. Yes, our devs in tandem with some of the best voxel artists out there spent the last month or so giving Dawn Apart a much-needed facelift and we couldn’t be more proud of how our game world looks now.

But before we show off our new biomes and document how far along we’ve come with some (pretty drastic) before and after comparisons, another reminder that you can join our ongoing, Discord-exclusive playtest (which will soon include the refurbished landscapes as well). All you have to do is join our Discord channel and sign the pinned form in the #playtest channel and you’ll receive a playtest steam key in the mail!


[h3]From procedurally generated to handcrafted[/h3]

We have always envisioned Dawn Apart to take place on a lush and beautiful planet with different biomes full of intriguing flora and fauna. But when, after initially focusing on game mechanics, we experimented with procedurally generated maps the end result never quite did the trick.

Yes, we had tons of amazing looking voxel assets but randomly sprinkling them over the map didn’t work for us. So, in a rather drastic change, we opted for putting the world design wholly in the hands of collaborating voxel wizards including @abductedbypixel @knosvoxel and @luminousviolett who have in the past worked on real gems such as Teardown or Cloudpunk.


[h3]Redesigning Aurora Chunk by Chunk[/h3]

The workflow went as follows: For each of our four biomes (desert, savannah, rainforest, highlands), the voxel artists designed one or more connected 256x256x256 voxel dioramas including trees, bushes, rock formations, rivers, and monuments like hamlets, crash landing sites, or odeons. We then gave those tiles to our in-house art department who fleshed out and expanded them according to a hand drawn map/matrix consisting of a total of 420 ‘world chunks’.

This method came with a set of unique challenges: Our art team had to be extra careful to connect various tiles seamlessly - especially those that connect different biomes. The artists also had to, along with assigning physical properties to materials such as metal, rock, or glass by color coding them, group and name every object in the landscape (e.g. foliage, trees, decorations) so that everything in a .vox file was parsed into the game scene accordingly.


[h3]More than a fresh coat of paint
[/h3]
This was time-consuming but in the end totally worth it, as it led not only to a visual update but improved and expanded the gameplay as well. As opposed to the mostly flat and uninteresting procedurally generated map, you can now discover and explore a living, breathing planet with the right mix of horizontal stretches (deserts, bodies of water) and verticality (steep mountains, cliffs, and jungles).

To conquer this version of Aurora, exploration and terraforming are key: Send a search party through the fog of war and you may discover a crash landing site, an ancient It’ak temple, or a coveted Lucrum deposit . Or remove a mountain top to expand your assembly lines and make room for your growing factory. It has become something of a cliche but with this visual upgrade the planet has become its own character: complex, dangerous and full of surprises.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
What do you think of the new look? Let us know in the comments! And if you want to set foot on the planet yourself and give us valuable feedback about the new game world, make sure to join our Discord-exclusive playtest. See you soon on Aurora!

With this patch we fixed another large number of miscellaneous bugs spanning from minor to fairly major. Agents just keep getting better and better along with a lot of gameplay system tightening up.

[h2]Changes[/h2]

• Fixed orphan dynamic goal overrides bricking agents
  
• Updated multi action planning for haul and construction to only consume as many interactions as the agent can handle with their carrying capacity
  
• Fixed agents potentially getting stuck in a mining animation forever
  
• Fixed HPA movement using previous frame heading causing issues at low fps
  
• Fixed error with hand ik if the targets parent is destroyed before it is re-parented
  
• Fixed agents failing to mine resources on hills
  
• Fixed move to target position getting snapped to incorrect grid intervals
  
• Fixed store item action having the incorrect multi plan type causing plans not to fail when they should
  
  
• Reduced crafting ingredient amount for punch press and chemical reactor
  
• Updated Message and Trade Content Controller to update based on trade expiration state
  
• Fixed message content scroll position not resetting when swapping messages
  
• Temporarily added 2x stockpiles items to the magpie storage
  
• Fixed terrain not having their raymarching meshes updated on building placement
  
• Fixed incoming item response system not properly updating mining drill storage
  
• Fixed incorrect stockpile & chemical reactor asset voxel offset
  
• Fixed a number of voxel item assets having duplicate vox objects
  
• Patched hpa build system accessing out of bounds neighbor indices
  
• Updated text in quit & quit to menu confirmation windows
  
• Disabled unimplemented accept & refuse buttons in quest message
  
• Tweaked cloud layer settings (This should fix the game starting in near darkness instead of at dawn)
  
• Fixed stockpile tooltip content always being enabled
  
• Fixed sprite type not updating on pause menu buttons if they were hovered when the menu closed
  
• Updated playtest welcome message to include gears
  
• Reduced Toast Lifetime
  

We're super excited to hear your feedback on the new agent changes and we will see you all soon for our next update!

PS: If you haven't yet, you can still join the playtest by joining our Discord server and filling out a form in the pinned message in our #playtest channel!

Hi Prospectors,

We’re thrilled to be a part of this year’s Tiny Teams Festival starting today and ending on August 15! Each year the good folks from Yogscast Games celebrate awesome Indie titles which are developed with teams consisting of 5 or less developers.

We’re not only part of the Steam sales part of the event (in the upcoming games section) but were also selected to be featured in their streaming schedule. So please tune in on August 9th from 5PM-8PM BST (4-7 PM CEST / 10AM-1PM EST) on Twitch, YouTube and the https://store.steampowered.com/sale/TinyTeams2024 for the world premiere of Dawn Apart gameplay, when Yogscasters Lewis and Ben make planetfall on Aurora and build their first factory.


In time for the festival we have also overhauled our ongoing playtest. Whereas the first leg of the playtest was centred around sandbox-style building with no restrictions or goals we have now activated the blueprint mode and added a goal: Now you have to build up assembly lines to craft machines and resources until you can produce Red Solvent, which is used to fuel Lucrum Miners. If you haven’t joined the playtest yet simply become a member of our Discord server, fill out the pinned form in the #playtest channel and we’ll send you a Steam key!

It's been a while, but we've been hard at work putting together more fixes and features for this update! There are so many general fixes, but with this update comes a return to the default way to play Dawn Apart. Instead of having infinite free blueprints that build instantly, you are required to craft items and have your prospectors get out there and build them. With this update agents are working much more reliably, and while still not perfect, it's a huge step in the right direction.

Along with these we have been working hard on our new world generation pipeline and are hoping to have a completely revamped world in the coming weeks. Just a little something to look forward to!

[h2]Changes[/h2]

• Reverted game mode to default Dawn Apart Game Mode (Blueprints are no longer free, and agents will build everything!)
  
• Added back to menu button in the game pause menu
  
• Fixed issue where agents would stock more than the amount required for a single ingredient during crafting
  
• Added logic to eject items from workbenches when removing recipe from the queue, but retain a number of stocked items if the next queued recipe can use them
  
• Fixed multi craft UI not updating the craft recipe component properly if a recipe queue element was completed
  
• Fixed recipe queue elements getting wacky when removing elements from the front then adding more elements
  
• Fixed pioneer avatar not being cleared when crafting recipe queue is cleared
  
  
• Fixed building connections looking at incorrect grid tiles due to floating point errors
  
• Added basic playtest trade quest chain (Space Port -> Red Solvent trade)
  
• Fixed trader translation becoming desynced at lower FPS
  
• Increased the time between dynamic trade creation
  
• Fixed Stockpile Groups not properly setting up their item storage on merge and split
  
• Fixed memory leak when loading save games due to undisposed prototype voxel data
  
• Fixed stockpile detail view deconstruct button always instantly deconstructing
  
• Fixed issue with stockpiles not allowing any number of agents to interact at once
  
• Fixed timed press progress bar not getting enabled when setting timed press state
  
• Fixed get item interactions not properly being cleared from smart objects
  
• Fixed agent carried item UI element not showing carried count
  
  
• Fixed items having their voxel mass values offset incorrectly
  
• Adjusted the simple water buoyancy values based on new wood density
  
• Updated Debug Camera Change Keybind. F12 -> Page Up
  
• Added WIP labels to game HUD elements currently in development
  
• Updated the starting stockpile items
  
• Added pre-alpha text to the game
  
• Added function to remove any invalid recipes from prototype database
  
• Added mini items for both conveyors
  
• Added fauna spawn padding around the start zone
  
• Adjusted wood and log spawn positions to avoid creations of overlapping voxel objects (Just a patch for the actual issue)
  
• Fixed Chem Lab having a non-null power source
  
• Fixed copper ingot not having the correct category assigned
  
• Copper/Steel Pole -> Copper-Steel Gear
  
• Fixed music playing multiple instances in some cases
  
• Fixed flora growing at incorrect intervals after destruction
  
• Disabled trader damage on landing, it now only rolls for damage when departing
  
• Fixed single frame flicker when selecting a combustion component with a different power state than the previously selected
  
• Fixed incorrect fuel corner text being cleared
  

[h2]Known Issues In Progress[/h2]

• Severing a completely destroyed limb leads to a crash
  
• Large scale terraforming can lead to a crash
  
• Stockpile and Conveyor Group interactions are not properly handled when merging and splitting
  
• Some walls have issues when placing on top of each other
  
• Invalid smart objects might lock up agents
  
• Agents sometimes perform interactions at the wrong location, for example mining far away from a patch
  
• Agents pick items off conveyors one at a time
  
• Agents with an attack order will completely skip queued move actions
  

Thanks again to everyone in our community, and those that are checking out and testing our updates. It means a lot to everyone on the team!

See you all soon for our next update!

PS: If you haven't yet, you can still join the playtest by joining our Discord server and filling out a form in the pinned message in our #playtest channel!

With this update we took a very deep look into our agents and fixed some issues with their GOAP systems. There is still a lot of work to do to enhance them, but starting with this patch they should be much more reliable at continuing doing the tasks they pick up and should no longer get stuck in a state where they just stand around. We also took the time to fix some smaller existing issues with saving and loading and implementing super basic ultrawide support.

[h2]Changes[/h2]

• Fixed issue where agents could get softlocked in an invalid plan
  
• Fixed issue where mining agents wouldn't keep their mining patch on hold while gathering mined resources
  
• Fixed a potential crash when agents would insert items into stockpiles or workbenches
  
• Fixed inserting items during store and stock up interactions potentially causing agent plans to completely fail
  
• Fixed multi plan type actions potentially re-adding actions for entities which have already been performed
  
• Fixed crash if agents wonder far off into unloaded sections
  
  
• Updated recipe change logic to cancel any ongoing crafting items and eject unused items
  
• Updated crane want item logic to only stock the minimum needed for crafting for depowered buildings
  
  
• Fixed ultra-wide monitors having issues with ui scaling (Thanks Choklad and Reikni!)
  
• Fixed fade panel not covering full screen at various resolutions (Thanks Hamilkar!)
  
  
• Fixed various issues due to missing components during loading of saves
  

[h2]Known Issues In Progress[/h2]

• Deconstructing certain buildings can lead to a crash
  
• Missing back to menu button
  
• Workbench doesn't eject items on recipe cancel/change
  
• High-res agent head scaled incorrectly
  

Thank you to everyone that has been playing the game and to all the newcomers to our community over on Discord. All your feedback, good and bad, helps us out tremendously on our development journey to make Dawn Apart the best game it can be.

See you all soon for our next update!

PS: If you haven't yet, you can still join the playtest by joining our Discord server and filling out a form in the pinned message in our #playtest channel!